Sarge
by DoctorWholigan
Summary: Sgt. Daniel Savage and his men of the 101st Airborne march on Romelle, only to find it deserted... One campfire and a Field Manual later, the fic gets interesting. Rated for violence.
1. Ein...

As much as Sergeant Daniel Savage would liked to have thought himself the most handsome man alive, this simply was not the case. Although anybody calling him an ugly man, or perhaps thinking him unseemly, would be entirely incorrect. He was a man whose real talents lay in a sharp mind, quick wit and a sense of justice, but with that in mind he was also rather handsome. He had hair that was brown, the same as his eyes, which he kept in a simply cut style which refused to let the longer earthen brown strands at the back touch his collar. His face was long, with a square chin and a dimple in the middle which was hard to shave - consequently there would usually be a long hair directly in the centre. His nose matched his thin profile, and beneath it was a pair of full, healthy lips which looked most becoming when they held one of his charming smiles, and that was quite often.  
  
He was a healthy man, was the Sergeant. He did not overeat in the mess, though his body was built just well enough for him to be considered 'stocky'. His uniform fit him well, and was pleasantly loose in all the right places, although he was able to puff out his chest and make it taut when an officer passed during inspection. Three lighter green stripes - chevrons, he would insist to those who called them stripes while he was present - were on the epaulet of each shoulder, which let everybody know to call him Sergeant. Unless of course, they held a rank higher than his, in which case the small sewn tag with last name in black on his chest let them know to call him Savage.  
  
Most people didn't call him Sergeant, or even Savage. The majority of people he knew called him Sarge, and that was a considerable amount of people, because he was the Platoon Sergeant for his platoon, and he was a relaxed kind of person that didn't mind people who he was in charge of calling him Sarge. Those people who were in charge of him would most often call him Daniel, unless they were terribly important, in which case he puffed out his chest and they called him Savage. The people he liked most were the people who called him Sarge, because they listened to him whenever he spoke. It didn't matter that they had to listen to him for the very same reason they were supposed to be calling him Sergeant - that being that it was his rank - because they usually wanted to listen, as Daniel Savage had a reputation amongst his platoon for being an awfully bright man, and when you listened to what he said it usually meant that he was telling you the easiest way to do something, or how to win at a game you were playing, or he would be making you laugh with a joke. He joked quite a bit. He also whistled, which was just what he was doing when our story actually takes place.  
  
The sun was high in the crystal sky, an unmistakable shade of summer blue, laced with delicate strands of fluffy white cloud scattered like somebody had sneezed into a large pot of icing sugar. The grass was dry, on account that it had been a while since the last rainfall, and the sun was even then drying out what little moisture remained to soften the earth against heavy footfalls. Not to say that by heavy it meant the men whose feet were falling there were careless, simply that they had been walking for quite some time, and their heavy packs made them heavy as well. One man whose pack didn't seem to be very heavy at all was Sergeant Savage - who we will call Savage - and that was because his attitude was as chipper as it usually was; his mouth wore a smile, and through it he was whistling a tune that none of his men knew, because he had just made it up then.  
  
Behind him were seven other men, all in various stages of being very grumpy with the man whose fault it was that they were wasting a lovely summer's day traipsing across the French countryside when they could have been tossing around a ball, playing cards, or doing anything that didn't involve them carrying most of what they owned in a drab green pack across fields they didn't even know the names of. Quite a few of them had hair which touched their collars, and though it wasn't true, often they would complain that their uniforms were too tight. Savage knew this was not the case, as before they had left the field base he had carefully ensured all his men would be as comfortable as possible during the march ahead of them. After all, that was his responsibility as Platoon Sergeant. He looked after his men, and they listened to him. While it may not seem like an awfully good trade to someone like you or I, Savage though this was absolutely brilliant, because if at any time he had to ask (he maintained that he was not a man who told others what to do, he asked, and they did things for him) one of his men to do something unpleasant, something that didn't seem very smart, or something that seemed downright dangerous, they would do it anyway.  
  
He stopped whistling, and stopped near a patch of dandelions in the paddock they were marching through. They were yellow, flowerish, and they came up to his knees. They may not have actually been dandelions, as while he knew quite a bit of important stuff, what flowers were which was not something he considered all that important. What was important was that he knew where they were. Knowing that his left knee was beside some bright yellow flowers which may well have been dandelions, and his right knee was about six inches to the right of that was not enough. He needed to know which field they were in, in which part of the countryside of Normandy. That was what he knew; they were in Normandy, and that was in France. He didn't know an awful lot about where they were. So he asked.  
  
First, though, he raised his right hand in a fist to signal that everybody should stop. They stopped quickly, thinking it was a strapping idea because they'd all had quite enough of the going part. "Where are we, Henderson?"  
  
Henderson, who had brown hair much like the Sergeant's and a beard over his squarish chin, wore two chevrons, meaning that he was a Corporal. He was one of the men who Savage told what to do, and was called Sarge by. He took a few quick steps past other men who were removing their dirty packs, moaning audibly about all and miscellany. "Headed in the right direction, Sarge. Romelle's out that way," Henderson made a chopping motion in the air with his hand as he pointed it roughly ahead of the group, towards a line of ruined buildings along a pathway that looked to Savage as if they'd simply been built that way. The amount of debris and rubble strewn over the pathway in was what let him known there had been bitterly fought battles there before.  
  
"Good." Savage gave a quick nod, and scratched at the prickly hairs which had sprouted on his chin while he had been unable to shave. He removed his olive painted helmet, the cool air ruffling his hair in just the right way to get rid of all the sweaty, hot spots, that he had been without a really good scratch while he wore the helmet. The helmet made a pretty good seat, when you turned it upside down so it was more like a pudding bowl than a helmet, and you carefully balanced yourself on the open end. Some men were putting their helmets on the ground the other way up, and inwardly Savage snickered to himself. Very soon they'd be picking up their helmets and putting French dirt all over their heads. It didn't strike him as frightfully important that he thought of something that was so simple as the soil on which they walked as being 'French', because most of what they had anything to do with was French in some way. The only things that you could be sure wouldn't be French were what you had your eye on since you jumped off the transport to France, and it's many French things.  
  
"Alright, guys," he said in his familiar drawl. "Get your gear together, back in formation, let's move out now."  
  
Once upon a time, as the storybooks usually started, Romelle would have been rather a nice place to visit, Savage reflected with one boot up on a table he had turned right way up and brushed mostly free of dust and dirt. The street was almost invisible under the amount of bricks, mortar, shards of glass, wood - in fact, most things that were used to make a building stand up were now all down, and in quite a few places it shouldn't be. One especially small piece had found it's way into Savage's boot, and now was the time he had chosen to take it out. The boot not on the table lay on a partially cleaned-away patch where there wasn't quite so much filth, and Savage himself was sitting in a thin wooden chair, facing down the street of skeletal buildings that jabbed at the blue sky with their sharp fingers of wood and steel. He had a nasty blister on his right heel, and the Sergeant was quite sure he wouldn't be able to walk straight for a while.  
  
His laces were far too long, one of the downsides to mass produced equipment. He tucked the black spaghetti into the tops of his boots and pushed down on the street experimentally. It didn't seem quite as bad as it had when he'd decided to stop and take out the stone, but it still stung - the important thing was that he could still walk. Run, if need be. The likelihood was that they would be doing a considerable amount of running. There were plenty of places in ruined Romelle that would be good to run to, and he had more than a few likely spots to take cover in stashed away in his clever mind. Henderson crossed the wooden planks which had spilled out from the Cafe behind them and into the street, stopping just behind Savage. Savage guessed that like himself, and most of the other men, his helmet would be hanging on his belt for the moment. Much more comfortable without that heavy lump of metal pressing down on your head.  
  
"A couple of the men are asking why we're here when the Airforce could've just blown the bridge themselves." Savage looked over his shoulder as if to make sure Henderson had actually been the one to say that. While Savage was well-known for speaking his mind, one thing that Corporal Henderson was not known for being was an outspoken man, which was quite obviously concerning to the Sergeant.  
  
"You haven't been told?"  
  
"No, Sarge."  
  
Savage tipped his head in a very, very tired nod. He could hardly remember the last time he had rested his head back and felt a clean pillow, soft and fluffy. When he put his head back now, he either fell over onto hard concrete, or was already lying down on it. The only difference was a large bump on his head that would rub inside his helmet. "Rommel needs the bridges along the river here to move his armor, if we're going to make a push on Cannes. What he'll do is try and shove us back along it's influence, trying to make us move on Cherbourg instead."  
  
Henderson nodded much quicker than Savage. He made it a habit to sleep on a nice soft part on his pack. "I guess, Sarge, but the question stands. Why are we here?"  
  
"Our job is to protect this bridge. Works both ways, you see... If Rommel can move a panzer over here, we can throw a Sherman back at him. This is one of only two bridges left on the whole river. We need it just as much as the Kraut's." Savage tapped the rifle which he had laid out on the table. "Second SS should be rolling over here soon. Make sure everybody knows where they're holding, right?"  
  
"Right." Henderson moved away, starting to bellow orders through the ruins as soon as he was out of sight. Savage liked that best about the Corporal, that Henderson did all the shouting while he, Daniel Savage, was able to save his voice for more important things. He eyed the bayonet fixed to his rifle and smiled for the first time in an age. He didn't understand bayonets. You ran at the enemy shouting 'Arrrgh!' and during that time, they either shot you, or got so scared they ran halfway across France so that you had to chase them, shouting 'Arrrgh!' all the while. It seemed one of the great mysteries of military tradition. 


	2. Zwei...

As much as Sergeant Daniel Savage would liked to have thought himself the most intelligent man alive, this simply was not the case. True, he was very quick to think under pressure, and he thought well on his feet - which was important, as he and his men did not get an awful lot of time off their feet - but that did not constitute him being the smartest man alive. It also did not mean that he could tell the future, which would have been frightfully useful. What it also would have meant was that he would have known that Hitler would invade Poland, and there would have been some great plan contrived by the people that he puffed out his chest for, and very likely, no World War Two. He could have stayed home and listened to all sorts of shows at once on the radio's in his Uncle's store where he helped to sell things. He didn't sell an awful lot, but it didn't matter to his Uncle because like his nephew, Daniel, he was a very kind man that didn't mind at all that what Daniel did was listen to the radio's and wear a tweed suit. He couldn't explain why, but he liked tweed. It had a warm sort of scratchiness that he enjoyed.  
  
He also particularly enjoyed the company of Laura Beaumont, who had been the first - and only - person to purchase anything from him while he listened to a game of baseball on his Uncle's many radio's. She commented on the game, and Savage had explained to her the difference between a foul and a strike. Within the next two hours, they were talking like old friends and Savage had promised to let her join him the next time he went to see a game. Baseball made him think of mini golf. She had given him a call on the telephone the very next day, and they had gone out to play mini golf instead of watching the baseball. Not being the sort of man that played mini golf that often, he was soundly beaten by Laura, who was kind enough to buy them both soda floats from the store on the corner of the street. They had lovely icecream, Laura had told him, and Daniel had told her it didn't matter what the floats were like, so long as he had lovely Laura.  
  
That had been the last day he had seen her, off to the war he had failed to predict within the same week. A letter to her rest heavily in his left chest pocket, and whenever it made the crumpling noise that paper all too often does, it reminded him of radios, mini golf, and Laura. This was the kind of thing that he and the men that called him Sarge were talking about around the fire which fought back the deathly chill in the night air of Romelle; their memories of home, and what they would be doing if they saw America again. Savage vowed to put on his tweed suit and visit Laura as soon as he got home. Even though he thought it sounded silly, nobody laughed at him. Private Ryan was sitting nearest the fire they had set up, and was regaling his friends with a caper he and his brothers had pulled whilst still on camp in America. The wind howled through the dead buildings again, and everybody shuffled closer to the warm glow of the fire amongst the sandbags, so they didn't miss out on any of the comical adventure.  
  
"So, anyway..." Ryan began. Ryan always seemed to begin a story with those two words. "Sergeant McGoldrick was havin' his shower, and Sean had pulled me aside while me and Daniel were getting ready for inspection. He pointed at the spot where the Sergeant had hung up his uniform, and there wasn't anything there! 'Watch this,' he told us both, an' he puts on his deepest voice and shouts, 'McGoldrick! Get out here now and explain to me why your men aren't ready for inspection!' Now, the Sergeant, he thinks this is Major Rickles who's come down to inspect the barracks - so he jumps out of the shower and there's nothing there, of course, so he grabs hold of the shower curtain, rips it off the rail, and starts runnin' around trying to find a fresh uniform!" By now, most of the group huddled together were in ripping fits of laughter, the noise ringing across the ruined town on both sides of the bridge. "So he runs outside, and wham! Runs straight into none other than the Major himself!" Finally, even Savage began to chuckle, the thin laughter soon joining into a full throated peal of hillarity ringing out from all. It took more time than absolutely necessary to stop laughing. Savage and his men didn't want to stop finding it funny, because once you stopped laughing, you had to go back to being a soldier.  
  
It took a while before Savage wiped away the tear that had rolled out of his eye carelessly while he laughed, and he smiled at Ryan from across the fire. "Now," he began, in the most ominous voice he could manage, which wasn't very ominous at all because he was wearing one of his wide smiles. "I guess I should think of something for you to do to make it up to Sergeant McGoldrick for all that..." Ignoring stunned looks from his men, Ryan in particular, he continued. "So put something else on the fire and break out the marshmallows!" The men cheered. Ryan hurled the last thick Field Manual onto the flames which promptly blazed alight, and reached behind them for the marshmallows he had discovered during the spot of raiding he and his fellows had done that afternoon. A lot of good French things had been left behind when people fled their homes for their very lives. One such item had been a box containing so many powder-coated marshmallows that even Henderson had lost count after fifty. Not that he hadn't lost proper count after numbers twelve and thirty seven found themselves in his mouth.  
  
All those who had saved the chocolate in their ration packs pulled it out, and those who hadn't were delighted when their comrades turned out to be the decent sort who shared chocolate when they had more than they thought they would like to eat. In the end, everybody had a handful of chocolate and marshmallows, staring thoughtfully at the fire. This was when Savage had one of his trademark brilliant ideas. "Bayonets," was all he had to say, and within instants everybody was pulling out their bayonets and spearing them with sweets. Somebody commented that it sure did beat having to spear Germans on them. Nobody disagreed with him. Savage handed another piece of the chocolate that you could keep in your pocket for days around their quiet, sombre circle, until it found it's way to Ryan, who had been one of the first to scoff his chocolate when they tore open their ration packs. Some wondered how they would survive on such slim pickings. Savage had merely smiled, and reminded them of the food on the 'General Randall' - the troop carrier that had brought them to France. There had been very few complaints after that.  
  
Ryan skewered the palm-sized hunk on his bayonet and held it out so that the bright orange tongues of flames could lick over it. It was only a few seconds before the chocolate began to drip, falling in round brown splats on the papers and wood the fire was crackling away on. Savage was toasting both a marshmallow and a piece of chocolate on his short blade at the same time. Delaney started humming, and within a moment everybody was humming the same tune, squatting on their helmets on a bridge in France, trying to keep warm around a fire they had made from things which were supposed to make their lives in France easier, but which really only gave them something else to carry in their packs. They ate the smores without further discussion. That was what most of Savage's men called the chocolate and marshmallow things - smores - but he simply referred to them as 'them yum chocolate and marshmallow things'. It was a lot simpler when you found yourself talking with Pom's, or Diggers, or Kiwi's, if you talked about something how it was, instead of inventing silly names for them. This confused Savage all the same, because at the exact same time he wondered if that was the case, then how on Earth did there ever come to be silly names for the Pom's, the Diggers, or the Kiwi's?  
  
That was one thing that his quick mind brushed over as he pulled his collar tighter around himself so that the wind couldn't hiss through it, chilling him to the bone. He brushed away a few concrete chips that had fallen astray while the group had wired the bridge with Composition-B - they had to be able to destroy the bridge in case the Germans did manage to take it - and laid his head down. With his back warmed by the pleasant glow of the fire, his stomach warmed from them yum chocolate and marshmallow things, and his smile planted anew on his face, he tried to shut off his brain. He wanted no more thoughts until the new day's light filtered through the French sky and danced across his eyes.  
  
It didn't happen like that at all. The night sky was still black like crushed velvet, the moon high and casting it's watery pallor over the embers from the fire and the other sleeping troops. Savage awoke with a start, first thinking of Laura Beaumont. He had been having rather a pleasant dream which reminded him of their first date, except she wasn't interested in baseball, she was infinitely more interested in him. And it didn't end the same, either. It wasn't a case of Laura and icecream, rather Laura was *in* the icecream, and rather a lot of it, at that. So, being as how he didn't have a spoon, Daniel Savage, the man who listened to many radio's at once in his Uncle's store, took to getting that icecream off the only other way that seemed appropriate, being as all that Laura was wearing was all that icecream. His second thought, as the smile drifted from his face and the motes of dust flew up his nose afresh, was to wonder how in the hell the SS had arrived in Romelle without Delaney alerting them all first.  
  
Julian Delaney sat alone in a ruined townhouse with lovely sea-blue walls. His last thought had been to wonder how in the hell he hadn't heard twenty of the Germans marching down the road in column formation. Before that he had been wondering how his mother would be at the moment, as he puffed away on a cheap carton of cigarettes which had been handed out before they were dropped off in France. They were British cigarettes, not any of that French crap. He guessed that today would be Friday - he guessed because nobody was able to keep track of the days very well - and as it happened on every Friday, Louise Delaney would be baking bread in the large iron oven in their Cleveland home. The whole kitchen would smell of the heavy, yeasty dough being put in the oven, and he reflected on how much as a young boy he liked to sit in there and take deep breaths of that air, offering to help his mother. That was before he had been fired on, and his grey matter was ejected violently from the back of his skull across the sea-blue walls, staining them a sickly, dark crimson.  
  
That was the shot which was able to rouse Savage from his dream of Laura in the icecream. It was also the shot which woke the rest of his men, grabbing dazedly at their rifles, unsure if this was real combat or if they were back at home, being woken from a peaceful sleep in the barracks with shouts of 'Fire' or 'Up! Germans!' Savage's rifle was in his hand faster than all the others. He knew all too well that this would not be an exercise on the range. Savage snatched his helmet from the bricks which made the bridge they had been sworn to protect through their duty to the United States Army, dumping it roughly on his head. In the darkness he could make out Henderson lacing a fresh belt of .30 calibre rounds into a machine gun, resting it's tripod on the line of sandbags which faced down the main street of Romelle. Huevara and Beckett charged off into the darkness; Huevara clutching two boxes of ammunition, Beckett with a machine gun tossed over his shoulder. They ran with their heads down, crunched foward over themselves uncomfortably as though the outcome of the war rested on their backs. Savage fought the urge to wave, instead he wondered if he would see them alive again without waving at all.  
  
One thing that Daniel Savage had always been noted for by the men who called him Savage was his remarkable eyesight. Through the misty grey light of pre-dawn, he made out a pair of grey uniforms picking their way through the rubble as men do when their next step is on uneven ground and they cannot see properly; their eyes were down. They did not see Savage, who hadn't sold a radio to anybody but Laura Beaumont in his entire life, who knew just how to puff out his chest when an officer passed, and who had a frightful blister in his boot because he'd been marched out to Romelle to fight them, even as they carefully planted their feet in the debris. Savage lifted the butt of his rifle to his shoulder, taking careful aim at the two men who he could see as plain as it were day. His right index finger squeezed the trigger, and the rifle kicked back with a deafening crack as the muzzle exploded into light, the single bullet sent speeding towards the German soldier who was just kicking aside a baby carriage he had come afoul of, and was even then looking up from, sure he had heard gunfire...  
  
Savage then made out the sight of the soldier falling back from a fatal shot to his chest, into the arms of his comrade. "Fire!" His men fired. Henderson gripped the .30's trigger, white-knuckled, pelting a line of bullets down the street. They kicked up tiny sprays of dust until the sprays became that of blood; the tracers found their way into the man holding his friend upright, screaming in German for a medic. Lead thumped into his thigh, his chest, and finally his head, then he too fell back. Both men hit the ground, disappearing behind a mound of fallen townhouse. The German weapons seemed to speak in one voice, thought Savage, as the whole of the Second SS Recon detachment picked something they thought might be American, and fired. The sharp stacatto blasts were only heard until the muzzle flashes illuminated the faces of the men who had fired, then Savage could see his next target. Henderson saw too, swinging the barrel of the machine gun to bear on a group of SS charging alongside the Cafe. The searing white light from each round that blasted from the end of the .30 lit his face for an infinite second in Savage's mind; his jaw set grimly, eyes shining in the night from a dark face trying to judge his next shot.  
  
Beckett and Huevara down the street were taking down Krauts as soon as Savage could see them, now that the battle had been joined. Savage vaulted the line of sandbags before him, heading to a spot behind barbed wire. He knelt on one knee, and fired a shot for tweed. He fired a shot for the baseball game he would miss, for all the games he had missed while he was stuck in France. He replaced his clip with mechanical ease, and fired off a round for each hole in the mini golf course he had visited with Laura Beaumont. Then, his eyes hot with the rage that was pouring through both his tears and his rifle, he emptied the clip into the dark for her. His hands fumbled in his bandolier for another clip, head turned down towards his equipment with his rifle's butt resting on the crack between brick bridge and concrete street, both covered in each other's dust where bullets around him were snatching tiny chunks out of each before slamming to a halt.  
  
Large as it was, the Germans seemed to be missing it an awful lot, choosing instead to take down his men. Beckett slumped foward over the .30 he was firing, the barrel slewing upward into the night, still spitting hot lead into the air over Romelle. Huevara put his arm out to push him off, before a bullet in the side of his head made that quite impossible, his dead body jerked away from the fallen gunner and coming to rest on the dust. Savage finally found his clip, slamming it into the base of his rifle and firing spasmodically at the leaping grey uniforms he could see but not kill. Another bullet took a chunk of concrete from the ground which flew into his eye, blinding him as the tiny stone scratched at the tender surface of his brown ocular. He threw up a hand, scrabbling at his face to try and see again, dropping his rifle to the bridge and instead pulling his pistol free to fire it into his self-inflicted dark.  
  
The right hand side of his chest felt in less than an instant like some great fist had just dealt him a solid blow, and he toppled back over where he knelt, thinking it was a smashing idea that he had his helmet on otherwise he'd have a nasty lump the next time he tried to sleep next to the fire on this grotty little bridge they had to keep the Germans away from, somewhere in France. Somewhere, very far away, he could hear somebody was concerned. He wondered why it was that Henderson had stopped firing, but he didn't think it mattered because then at least he could hear Ryan. "Sarge!" cried the young Private, racing over the sandbags to grab Savage by the collar, who he hauled as fast as he could around the defensive line and behind Henderson's position, who had by then begun to fire again. Good, they'd take down more Germans that way. He tried to snatch a frosty breath from the morning air that was alight with gunfire, but found that he couldn't. Something was wrong when he would breathe in, and that was that his chest felt awfully heavy. He put his hand up, poking around inside his shirt until something felt wet. Wet, and hotter than the rest of his chest. Trembling, though he couldn't discern why, he tugged his fingers free of his shirt, and in the pale moonlight being speckled with occasional shots, he could make out red on his hand.  
  
Ryan was beside him still, muttering what Savage guessed were supposed to be comforting words like 'Hang tight, Sarge,' and 'We'll get you to a field hospital, pronto.' Savage did not want to go to the hospital. He wanted to know why it was his chest had blood on it, and why he could not take a breath in. Questions raced around his head like lit skyrockets, each burst marked with a jolt of pain as he realised with both eyes wide open that he had been shot! Him! Sergeant Savage! The moon's light seemed darker than it was, which he thought through clouds of gunpowder ringing in his head was strange, because wasn't it supposed to be lighter as time went on? Ryan's tune had changed as fast as one of his whistling compositions. "Medic! We need a medic over here! C'mon, Sarge, just a little while." He tried to smile, to reassure Ryan that he felt just fine. All he needed was to catch a breath, and get the freight train off his chest, because it certainly felt as if something damned heavy had parked itself there. Ryan started to disappear, as the last rays of the moon's light slipped from the wounded Sergeant's vision as slowly as the beads of hot, dark blood spread across the fated bridge beneath him. "Sarge, Sarge! Come on, open your eyes!"  
  
Strangely, before he finally succumbed to the dark, Daniel Patrick Savage, the man who wore tweed, could think of only one thing in the world he wanted to say.   
  
"Vanilla, please." 


End file.
